Posts Tagged ‘
START ’
Tuesday, December 21st, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
The 111th Congress is still a few days from concluding, but with Saturday’s Senate vote repealing the military’s Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell policy, it can boast a record of progressive accomplishment that may give pause to liberal critics of the Obama administration. Ratification of the START treaty just before Christmas would be a nice capper before the difficult period begins with the Republican takeover of the House and the official burial of any filibuster-proof Democratic Senate Majority.
Since this is my last memo for 2010, it’s as good time as any to examine the political mood of the country going into 2011.
It’s worth noting that there’s really no consensus interpretation of what ultimately happened in the midterm elections. Democrats remain divided between those who view the November setback as primarily a structural phenomenon attributable to a bad economy and inevitable shifts in the turnout patterns, and those who believe strategic and tactical errors by the President and congressional leaders invited the defeat. Liberal activist criticism of Obama for his conciliatory public attitude towards Republicans, conservative Democrats, and “big business,” while familiar to anyone who remembers the Clinton years, reached a sharp new point near the end of the year, nearly producing a revolt in the House against the Obama-McConnell tax deal.
But it’s unclear whether this hostility among opinion-leaders is widely shared in the actual “base” of Democratic voters. The latest Gallup tracking poll does show Obama’s job approval rating among self-identified liberal Democrats dipping below 80 percent for the first time, but 79 percent approval is still a pretty high number. Anyone fantasizing about a left-bent primary challenge to the president should look at last week’s Magellan poll of NH, which showed Obama trouncing any potential rival there, even though it should be one of his weakest states.
Republicans, meanwhile, have largely taken a triumphalist view of the midterms as indicating a conscious conservative “turn” in the electorate that has rejected Obama, Pelosi and their “socialist” policies. The major topic of dissension among conservative commentators is whether the risk to be most avoided is an ideological rigidity that prevents Republicans from taking advantage of Democratic missteps, or instead a return to the “big government conservatism” and ideological laxity that, in their view, doomed the Bush administration.
Since the air is often full of warnings to party leaders from both sides of the spectrum against compromise with the satanic opposition, it’s interesting to look a little more deeply at Democratic and Republican attitudes on the subject of bipartisanship. A recent analysis by Pollster.com’s Mark Blumenthal reaches the striking conclusion that poll numbers showing high public support for “compromise” can be misleading:
For many partisans, “compromise” is really a disguised expression of partisanship. They want to see the leaders of both parties working together, but mostly in support of their preferred policies. A larger number of Democrats — a third to half — are open to their leaders compromising with the Republicans, and that difference helps tilt the overall numbers in favor of compromise.
In other words, support for “compromise” is lower than it looks, but for all the progressive angst about Obama betraying his base, he appears to have more maneuverability when it comes to compromise than does his Republican counterparts. Certainly the base-dominated 2012 presidential nominating process is likely to exert a strong rightward influence on the GOP.
Five key things to look for early next year:
- Most obviously, the economy: Is it recovering in a way that will be tangible to voters in 2012? Will Republicans at the federal and/or state levels take actions that essentially sabotage recovery by depressing consumer demand?
- Redistricting: How aggressively will Republicans pursue their midterm advantage in the states, and how much leeway will courts give them in legislative gerrymandering?
- The deficit debate: Will it develop in a way that encourages cooperation at the risk of premature austerity policies, or that sharpens partisan differences?
- Afghanistan: The one thing that could turn liberal grumbling about Obama into serious intraparty opposition would be the perception that he’s dragging his feet on withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
- Republicans: Will the GOP finally secure visible leadership that helps rather than hurt the party’s political prospects? Can they do better than McConnell and Boehner, Gingrich and Palin?
The dynamics of the 2012 election cycle will depend on all five of these factors, aside from the nuts and bolts of money and organization and candidate personalities. Whether the two parties—or barring that, the president alone via executive action—can accomplish much while jockeying for future position is another question entirely.
Tags: 111th Congress, Afghanistan, austerity, big business, big government, bipartisanship, Boehner, Bush, Clinton, compromise, conservatives, consumer demand, DADT, Deficits and debt, federal, Gallup, gerrymandering, Gingrich, GOP, ideological rigidity, liberal, Magellan, Mark Blumenthal, McConnell, midterm elections, moderate, NH, Obama Administration, Obama-McConnell, Palin, Pollster.com, progressive, redistricting, socialist, START, tax deal
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Friday, December 17th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
The end-game of this congressional session has suddenly come alive with developments that could have a major political impact down the road, if not sooner.
Last night’s House approval of the Obama-McConnell tax deal is a case in point. The White House survived its most emotional collision yet with the left wing of the Democratic Party, and managed to secure a majority (139-112) of House Democratic votes for the deal, despite an earlier Democratic Caucus resolution disapproving it. It’s probably worth remembering that in his own disputes with House Democrats, Bill Clinton wasn’t always so successful: majorities of House Democrats voted against NAFTA in 1993 and welfare reform in 1996.
If you look through the roll call on the tax deal, the Democratic votes are generally not surprising: most “nays” came from the more liberal Members, including, interestingly enough, all members of the leadership other than Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi (who didn’t vote). There was, however, a smattering of deficit hawks among the naysayers. The vast majority of true “lame ducks” (defeated or retiring Members) voted for the deal.
Approval of the deal will obviously create another big tax debate during the 2012 presidential campaign. But more immediately, it will be interesting to see to what extent the deal and the debate over it has set back efforts to build bipartisan support for deficit reduction measures. Without question, congressional Republicans will now be under more pressure than ever to cut “liberal” spending programs, but the very limited Democratic support for such steps probably got a lot weaker during the tax deal debate.
That brings me to the other big development yesterday: the defeat-by-threatened-filibuster in the Senate of an omnibus appropriations bill for the current fiscal year. This outcome resulted from no fewer than nine Republican senators reversing earlier support for the bill, and was very heavily influenced by publicity over earmarks—many inserted by Republican senators—which is now officially a no-no for Republicans.
Tea Party types were actually upset not just by the earmarks, but by overall levels of spending. And Republicans may have bought themselves some early trouble: after a short-term continuing resolution, they will bear new responsibility for drafting a House version of either individual or omnibus appropriations bills, and will finally have to admit that items more popular than waste, fraud and abuse would have to be cut to produce sizable savings.
On the other hand, as David Dayen has pointed out, by losing the omnibus appropriations fight, Democrats could have set the table for undoing the stimulative effect of the tax deal. If Republicans succeed in securing major appropriations cuts—say, an across-the-board reduction attached to a continuing resolution—then that could indeed reduce aggregate demand, particularly in conjunction with the wide-scale spending reductions that will soon be initiated by state governments who can no longer count on the safety net dollars of the 2009 stimulus legislation.
Other bills kicking around the Senate at the end of this session also carry a lot of political freight: the DREAM Act, which was once an acceptable Republican vehicle for offering a hand in fellowship to Latinos, yet is now an opportunity for casting an angry anti-immigrant vote; the DADT repeal, which is inevitable, but is also still a source of great angst in Christian Right circles; and the START Treaty, which could determine whether anything like a bipartisan foreign policy can be carried out in today’s polarized atmosphere.
We’ll know a lot more after a frenetic weekend that could feature a DADT vote on Sunday.
Tags: 2012 Presidential Campaign, anti-immigrant, approprations bill, Bill Clinton, bipartisanship, Christian Right, DADT, David Dayen, Deficits and debt, Democratic Caucus, DREAM Act, earmarks, fiscal year, lame-duck Congress, Latinos, liberals, NAFTA, Nancy Pelosi, Obama-McConnell, START, Steny Hoyer, Taxes, Tea Party, welfare reform
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Tuesday, December 14th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
The Obama-McConnell tax deal is expected to head from the Senate to the House today, with the big question being whether House Democrats have the temerity to amend the bill and risk a wholesale Republican abandonment of the process.
Senate defections on the key cloture vote were pretty limited: Ten Democrats (Bingaman, Brown, Feingold, Gillibrand, Hagan, Lautenberg, Leahy, Levin, Sanders, Udall) and five Republicans (Coburn, DeMint, Ensign, Sessions and Voinovich). Steny Hoyer is hinting that House Democrats will be given an opportunity to support an amendment making the package more acceptable to progressives, but that a majority will be there for the original deal.
The estate tax provisions seem to be the real flashpoint for opposition from both sides, with Republicans objecting to the return of the “death tax” (even though under current law it’s due to resurrect itself at 2001 levels) and Democrats objecting to a relaxation in rates and exemptions benefitting a handful of the very rich without generating any positive impact for the economy. This is the sort of very basic difference of perspective on which compromise is probably impossible.
Meanwhile, two new public opinion surveys indicate pretty strong support for the deal across party lines.
According to Pew, 60 percent of Americans support the tax deal, while 22 percent disapprove. More interesting, an above-average 64 percent of self-identified conservative Republicans and 65 percent of self-identified liberal Democrats support the deal. A WaPo/ABC survey shows respondents favoring the package by a 69-29 margin, with support rising to 75 percent among self-identified Republicans and 68 percent among both self-identified Democrats and indies.
Interestingly, this survey shows narrow majority popular support for three enumerated parts of the deal—the UI extension, the two-year extension of the Bush income tax rates, and the new estate tax rates and exemptions—but 57 percent opposing the payroll tax holiday, generally considered the provision most likely to stimulate the economy. Breaking down these elements by party ID, the UI extension is the only provision gaining majority support among Democrats, Republicans, and indies, though the increase in the estate tax exemption comes close (with support from 52 percent of Democrats and 48 percent of indies). The whole package is generally more popular than its parts, which might indicate some support for bipartisan action as an end in itself.
Elite opinion is clearly on a track of its own. Aside from the strong opposition to the deal among many progressive opinion-leaders, which has resonated with House Democrats, conservative opinion is split, especially in the ranks of potential 2012 presidential candidates. Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich—two candidates who have most emphasized cultural as opposed to economic issues—have endorsed the deal. Mitt Romney, who has been burnishing his credibility with conservatives by taking a strong stand against ratification of the new START Treaty, came out against the tax deal today, arguing that temporary tax cut extensions would not reduce investor “uncertainty” and also calling for an overhaul of the entire UI system. Sarah Palin also expressed opposition to the tax deal, but without elaboration other than an attaboy for Jim DeMint, whose own opposition was motivate by the “unpaid-for” UI extension and the very existence of the “death tax.” Rush Limbaugh, Charles Krauthammer, and RedState’s Erick Erickson have also been outspoken opponents of the deal, mostly on grounds that this is not time for cooperation with Obama and Democrats. It’s probable that some conservatives privately oppose a deal on the additional grounds that the deadlock prevents congressional action on DADT and START until the new Congress takes office.
Right in the midst of this saga, conservatives have been significantly distracted by a federal district court ruling in Virginia that the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. Two other federal district judges have ruled otherwise in parallel suits, and it’s obvious the whole issue will have to be resolved by the U.S. Supreme Court. But conservatives are greeting the decision with high hosannas, presumably wanting to burnish the credibility of their arguments for a radically scaled-back interpretation of federal powers under the Commerce Clause. If the High Court does indeed embrace this interpretation, progressives will have a broader set of problems than the demise of ACA’s individual mandate; the constitutionality of a whole range of existing federal programs could be called into question.
Photo credit: Phillip Ingham
Tags: ACA, Affordable Care Act, Bingaman, Brown, Bush income tax rates, Charles Krauthammer, Coburn, Commerce Clause, conservative opinion, DADT, death tax, DeMint, Elite opinion, Ensign, Erick Erickson, Feingold, Gillibrand, Hagan, Jim DeMint, Lautenberg, Leahy, Levin, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, new estate tax rates and exemptions, Newt Gingrich, Obama-McConnell, payroll tax holiday, Pew, Rush Limbaugh, Sanders, Sarah Palin, Sessions, START, Steny Hoyer, Tax Cut Deal, U.S. Supreme Court, Udall, UI extension, Virginia, Voinovich, WaPo/ABC
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Friday, December 10th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
It’s been one of those weeks in Washington. Just a few days ago, it appeared the tax deal between the president and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell had broken the lame-duck session logjam, resolving the stickiest problem and paving the way for late-session action on issues like DADT and START.
Now votes on the tax deal have been pushed into next week amidst a resolution of disapproval by House Democrats, and the DADT repeal has lost a key Senate floor vote once again.
It’s hard to say whether the President’s very early signals that he’d be willing to strike a deal to avoid the expiration of Bush’s tax cuts made the ultimate liberal backlash more understandable or puzzling. The only surprises in the final deal were the inclusion of a payroll tax holiday, the one stimulative proposal with significant support in both parties; extension of the enhanced EITC and child tax credits created in the 2009 stimulus package, a total concession to Democrats; and revisions in the resurrected federal estate tax—which didn’t exist in this calendar year—to create lower rates and higher exclusions than was the case before the Bush tax cuts first took place.
Some progressives (though not many) profess to oppose the payroll tax holiday on grounds that it’s part of a collateral attack on Social Security. Some also express moral outrage over the proposed estate tax concessions, pointing out (quite properly) that they will have zero positive impact on investment and growth. But the main complaint is that Obama never really went to the mats to defend the consensus Democratic opposition to high-end Bush tax cuts and their extension, and the main beef seems to be retroactive as much as prospective.
The tax-deal rebellion reflects gradually building liberal anger towards the Obama administration on topics ranging from the public option in health care to the unwillingness to pursue prosecution of Bush administration figures over civil liberties violations and treatment of terrorism suspects; the expansion of the U.S. troop commitment in Afghanistan; and above all, the President’s continuing protestations of bipartisanship. Furious injunctions to the president to “fight” for progressive principles, regardless of the legislative consequences, have spread far beyond the blogosphere to a wide array of congressional Democrats.
What’s unclear at the moment is whether the House Democratic action represented just a symbolic measure that won’t get in the way of House approval of the tax deal next week, or a more serious protest that will require some sort of modifications in the package that progressives can claim as a trophy. The latter contingency, of course, will give conservative Republicans a new excuse to walk away from the package and try to impose their own tax policies in the next Congress with their enhanced numbers.
In any event, the intra-Democratic rhetoric has grown so strong that it’s revived the immediate-post-election chattering classes talk about a primary challenge to Obama in 2012, with journalist Robert Kuttner being the most outspoken about dumping Obama lest he become the “Democrats’ Hoover,” and with anyone who defends the tax deal getting a lot of heat as a sell-out.
The most certain thing about the tax deal is that it has obliterated the attention that was being given to the Bowles-Simpson commission report and a variety of other deficit reduction proposals, even as the two parties appeared poised to approve measures that would create added deficits in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars. The lack of resistance (so far) by Tea Party Movement figures is as good a sign as any that its alleged total focus on debts and deficits is, like that of the Republican Party it dominates, a mirage that quickly fades once high-end tax cuts are on the table.
In other words, deficit-talk seems most useful in Washington as a way for partisans to excoriate their opponents’ priorities—i.e., the Democratic resistance to “entitlement reform” and the Republican resistance to progressive taxation and restrained defense spending. Actual concern on the topic, however, is harder to find, even at the end of a year where it’s rarely out of the headlines.
Tags: Afghanistan, bipartisanship, Bowles-Simpson, Bush tax cuts, civil liberties violations, DADT, deficit reduction proposals, Deficits and debt, Democrats' Hoover, EITC, estate tax concession, Health care, Lame Duck, liberal backlash, Mitch McConnell, Obama, payroll tax holidays, progressive principles, progressives, Robert Kuttner, Social Security, START, Tax Compromise, Tea Party, Terrorism, U.S. troop commitment
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Tuesday, December 7th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
The tax deal cut yesterday between the White House and congressional Republican leaders will have a complicated legacy that’s a bit difficult to anticipate at the moment.
That’s assuming it’s approved by Congress. Bernie Sanders is already promising a Senate filibuster on the deal, whose very existence is offensive to many progressives, and RedState’s Erick Erickson is calling for opposition from conservatives. But it will probably get through these obstacles, if only because about the only political force that actually supports the alternative—the expiration of all the Bush tax cuts along with a major lapse in unemployment insurance benefits—is the deficit-hawk Democrat contingent, who have limited clout in Congress at the moment.
The revolt against this deal on the left will likely generate more heat and noise than actual votes. Many progressives are already furious at Obama for telegraphing his willingness to cut a deal before it was necessary, and for his generally uncombative pubic stance, which they interpret as evidence the President didn’t learn much from his first two years in office. Others simply want to register as strongly as is possible their rejection of the ideology supporting the Bush tax cuts, including the estate tax reductions that are incorporated into the compromise.
As scrutiny of the deal sharpens, however, the extension of increases in refundable tax credits aimed at the working poor in last year’s stimulus package may get some attention as well. These are benefits that Republicans have been increasingly denouncing as “welfare,” so this is perhaps a victory-in-principle for progressives.
Ultimately, the political impact of the deal will probably be measured by its impact, if any, on the economy. Will the payroll tax holiday provide some critically timed stimulus? Will investors be impressed by the bipartisanship of it all? And would the alternative of letting the tax cuts expire and work in Washington grind to a halt have guaranteed the much-feared “double-dip recession”?
Matt Yglesias stresses these short-term economic consequences in his own reaction to the deal:
[T]his has partially set my mind at ease about the prospects of a GOP strategy of economic sabotage. The tax policy the right wants, though in general bad for the country, is not bad for short-term economic performance. And the concessions they were willing to give Obama in exchange for boosting the incomes of rich people are expansionary in the short-term. So the terrain here exists well within the range of “normal” politics where conservatives want lower taxes on rich people. This is kind of nutty in my view, but it’s a deeply held article of faith on the right and not some ad hoc effort to sink the economy or anything.
Ezra Klein, however, notes the limited stimulative effect the deal is likely to have:
Most of the money just keeps programs that are currently in effect from expiring, so in some ways, it would be more accurate to say that this money is anti-contractionary rather than stimulative. It’s important that the White House doesn’t repeat the mistake it made in the original stimulus and overpromise how much this will do for the economy. What you can say about this policy is that, for the moment, it doesn’t make things much worse, and it probably makes them a bit better. This is not the government making a major new commitment to the recovery. It’s the government not getting in the way, and maybe doing a bit to help, the horribly slow recovery that’s happening anyway.
A collateral benefit, of course, would be the enactment during the lame-duck session of the Defense Authorization bill, which includes an end to DADT, and Senate ratification of the START treaty. The deal seems to have eliminated the most immediate obstacle to action on these measures; we’ll soon know if progress is now possible.
More generally, the deal guarantees another and perhaps truly definitive battle over tax principles in 2012, adding to the high-stakes nature of that year’s presidential election.
Photo credit: id3
Tags: Bernie Sanders, bipartisanship, Bush tax cuts, DADT, defense authorization bill, Erick Erickson, Ezra Klein, lame-duck session, Matt Yglesias, payroll tax holiday, progressives, START, Tax Compromise, tax deal cut, Taxes, unemployment insurance benefits, welfare
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Friday, November 19th, 2010
Will Marshall
Will Marshall is the president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
by Will Marshall
No sooner had Congress convened this week for a post-election, lame duck session than a partisan squabble erupted in the Senate that threatens to scuttle a major nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia.
The contretemps began when Jon Kyl, the Senate Republican Whip, said he doubted the Senate could take up ratification of the NEW START arms accord until next year. This may seem like an innocuous comment on scheduling, but delay could well spell death for the treaty. This year, President Obama needs eight GOP Senators to meet the 67-vote threshold for ratifying treaties; next year, he would need 14.
Kyl’s remarks were especially galling to treaty backers since he had earlier called New START “relatively benign” so long as the United States also takes steps to assure the reliability of its nuclear arsenal. Obama duly committed enormous sums to upgrade national weapons laboratories and modernize again nuclear warheads, including budgeting an additional $4 billion specifically to placate Kyl. In his statement, however, Kyl referred cryptically to “complex and unresolved issues” that still need to be worked out.
The administration nonetheless has said it will press for a vote this year. Failure to ratify the pact would be a major embarrassment for Obama, who promised the Russians the deal would be concluded this year. But even more, it would be a triumph of blind partisan animus over America’s national security interests, and our government’s to carry out a coherent and effective diplomacy with the rest of the world.
More is at stake than the rather modest arms reductions (under the treaty, both sides would cap their nuclear warheads at 1,550, down from the previous ceiling of 2,200). Senate rejection of the treaty could unravel the administration’s efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to disruptive states, as well as its “reset” of relations with Russia, which it believes has begun to pay dividends on Afghanistan, Iran, and other important fronts.
It’s one thing for Washington partisans to squabble over domestic issues, like extending the Bush tax cuts. It’s quite another to let their fights spill over in the international arena, and undermine America’s ability to lead abroad. In the not-so-distant past – namely, the presidency of George H.W. Bush – arms accords passed the Senate on nearly unanimous votes. If Senate Republicans kill NEW START, it will be another dismal sign that our deeply polarized politics no longer stops at the water’s edge.
This piece is cross-posted at No Labels
Tags: Afghanistan, America's national security interests, Bush, GOP, Homeland security, Iran, Jon Kyl, Lame Duck, Nuclear Arms, Post-Election, President Obama, Russia, Senate Republican Whip, START
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Friday, November 19th, 2010
Ed Kilgore
Ed Kilgore is a PPI senior fellow, as well as managing editor of The Democratic Strategist, an online forum.
by Ed Kilgore
“High risk” seems to be the consensus term for President Obama’s decision to push for ratification of the new START Treaty during this year’s lame-duck session. That’s understandable; hardly any Republicans senators are on board, and Republican senators-elect are complaining that no treaty votes should be taken until they have been sworn in (of course, they are complaining about the very existence of a lame-duck session, so that’s not a terribly distinctive argument). The administration needs 67 votes for ratification, and once Mark Kirk obtains his early swearing-in just after Thanksgiving, there will only be 58 Democratic senators.
But fewer voices are asking if Republican obstruction of START carries any political risks. There is virtually no evidence that foreign policy had a significant partisan impact on the midterm elections, even amongst the Republican-tilted November 2 electorate; no one can credibly claim any conservative mandate on arms control or other defense policy controversies. The President has consistently obtained some of his strongest approval ratings on foreign policy and defense issues. He has a glittering array of distinguished Republican backers for START representing past GOP administrations. And the argument being made for delay on START by the most visible GOP senators—the treaty needs to be held hostage to higher defense spending (for nuclear modernization)–strikes a discordant note with GOP and nonpartisan demands for immediate reductions in federal spending, not to mention the desire for bipartisanship wherever possible.
Moreover, it’s not clear that Republicans have their own internal act together on defense and foreign policy; there are a host of potential rifts, some left over from the Bush administration, some dating back to the Cold War. Perhaps the threat to delay START ratification is more of a bluff, and if the administration doesn’t call it, progress on any other legislation during the lame duck session could prove impossible. The politics of this fight will now become clearer now that the White House has refused to back down.
The big overriding question, of course, is whether bipartisan cooperation will prove possible on any significant issue, with Republicans making full extension of Bush tax cuts and a drive to repeal health reform their top priorities. There’s some interesting new political science data on the extent to which the midterms increased polarization in Congress (or at least in the House). According to Adam Bonica, who is using the standard measurement for the ideological positioning of Members of Congress:
77 percent of freshmen Republicans in the 112th Congress will locate to the right of the party median from the 111th. In other words, nearly 8 in 10 incoming House Republicans would have been on the right wing of the party in the 111th Congress.
The problem for Republicans is that their “conservatism” does not necessarily dictate clear positions on many defense policy issues, or on the larger conflict between deficit reduction and other policy goals. But ideology by no means disposes the GOP to cooperate with Democrats, and particularly with the President whose defeat in 2010 is, according to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, their paramount goal.
On the public opinion front, pollsters are beginning to shift from retrospective looks at 2010 voters towards efforts to measure the likely 2012 electorate, which will be much larger, younger, less white, and less conservative. The shift in perspective can sometimes be dramatic. Public Policy Polling caused a stir by releasing a large batch of state polls of likely 2010 voters showing President Obama trailing a “generic Republican” in all of them, some by big margins. Then PPP released a poll of Virginians who voted in any of the last three elections, and measured Obama against named potential GOP opponents, and the picture was very different: Obama not only had a positive (50/45) job approval rating in the Old Dominion, but led (or in the case of Mitt Romney, was tied with) all the Republicans who might run against him. And this was in a state where on November 2 Republicans knocked off three Democratic House members and nearly beat a fourth. It’s all about who gets asked, and how the questions are framed.
Tags: 112th Congress, Adam Bonica, Bush tax cuts, Cold War, defense issues, defense policy controversies, Democratic Senators, Foreign policy, Generic republican, high-risk, Homeland security, Lame Duck, Mark Kirk, midterm elections, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney, PPP, President Obama, Public opinion, Public Policy Polling, republicans, START, Virginians, White House
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Monday, November 8th, 2010
Jim Arkedis
Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.
by Jim Arkedis
Here’s how Bill Kristol, Fox News contributor and editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, summed up a panel discussion I attended at the conservative American Enterprise Institute:
This is a truly distinguished panel, and one I’m happy to say that’s fair and balanced. We have (former Republican Senator from Missouri) Jim Talent, a responsible, respectable hawk. We have a slightly crazed militarist in Tom Donnelly, and a really insane hegemonic imperialist… me. It’s the correct spectrum of opinion.
The crowd chuckled its DC chuckle, and Wild Bill began. As it turned out, he was ironically prophetic – these people are batshit crazy. That tens of newly-elected Tea Partiers – folks who have never had much to say on national security and foreign policy issues – are now taking their cues from these jokers is downright terrifying.
But before diving into the political angles, here’s what makes these nutcases tick:
My suspicions were first aroused when former Senator Jim Talent (MO) blamed Bill Clinton for Iraq. Would that I were joking! Indeed, Talent bemoaned Clinton’s decision to scale down the size of the military in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War. He correctly claimed that we were “fully deployed” during Iraq and Afghanistan, meaning that we simply didn’t have the numbers of troops necessary to properly resource both conflicts. It’s painfully and unfortunately obvious that Talent learned exactly the wrong lesson from Iraq and Afghanistan:
How much money and how many lives would it have saved if we’d have had 14 divisions instead of 10 and had been able to do in Afghanistan at the same time as we were (doing) in Iraq? … The blood, the lives, the people who were dying… we could have been years ahead of that schedule!
In other words, not only was invading Iraq the right call, we should have gone bigger and harder. It’s just too bad that all those people had to die and we had to waste all that money there because Bill Clinton decided to cut the size of the military after the Cold War.
Is Jim Talent a co-author on Decision Points or something? And here I was thinking that the decision to go to war without fully understanding what we were getting ourselves into caused all the slow progress.
Then there was Kristol’s fundamentally misguided view of defense spending. And that’s odd because he starts out with a correct general premise: “We should cut what should be cut and shouldn’t cut what shouldn’t.” That’s all well and good, provided you think that there are things to be cut. So over to you, Bill:
The best possible spending you can have is defense spending! We got out of the Great Depression by having a big defense build up…. The Pentagon has plenty of shovel ready projects!
F-22? No way! Foreign aid? Why not? It was deliciously ironic that while Kristol supported the idea of foreign assistance, he was open to restructuring its $45 billion budget; at the same time, Kristol lauded Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), incoming House Appropriations chairman, saying Ryan “knows how little can be saved in the defense budget — maybe $20 billion.” Pssst: Bill, that’s almost half of the foreign aid budget you think is big enough to reexamine. It’s also half of State’s.
It all seems so obvious to Talent: The defense budget “is affordable. To argue that it’s not affordable just isn’t right.” It’s especially affordable if we keep cutting taxes, right Jim?
Talent wrapped it all up in a nice big Fox News bow by tying alleged American declinism to Obama’s nefarious plan to nominate Joseph Stalin’s ghost as Tim Geithner’s replacement: “A socialized economy will not let America remain a great power.” But hold on there –- does a socialist want to “position our nation for success in the global marketplace” via a “strong, innovative, and growing U.S. economy in an open international economic system that promotes opportunity and prosperity”? Then Talent has some explaining to do, because that’s what the president says in this year’s National Security Strategy.
Thankfully, there was one area these mental dwarfs didn’t completely screw up: New START. Let’s be clear: Their partisan glasses won’t let them whole-heartedly endorse a very sensible treaty. Instead, they’re holding it hostage to more missile defense spending. But they’ll vote for it… hopefully.
Now, this all gets incredibly fascinating when you put it in a political context. The major take-away from this session is that the conservative establishment is pissing down their collective leg at the Tea Party’s soon-to-be dominant position on the Hill. Their plan is to co-opt the Tea Party by supplying it with mainstream conservative positions in an area the Tea Party doesn’t spend much time thinking about.
Kristol liquored up new Tea Partiers in hopes of bringing her home after the prom:
I think the Tea Party gets a bum wrap. They don’t believe we should lose wars, they don’t believe we should weaken the military, they do believe the world would be safer if Iran didn’t have nuclear weapons.
Jim Talent poured a few shots into Kristol’s punchbowl by hitting the “DC Republican establishment” (note to Talent: you’re a member.)
People who sat around and didn’t do what had to be done in 2001-2004 (specifically: Don Rumsfeld)… it’s a little much for them to be all up in arms because one Tea Party candidate said something that sounded vaguely not quite correct from the point of view of a strong U.S. foreign policy.
They’re pandering, and hard. Rand Paul doesn’t know it yet, but the Tea Party’s biggest spending hawk is about to vote for an ever-increasing defense budgets soon enough.
It was a mind-blowing Friday morning for yours truly, but was very reassuring in a way: The conservative establishment is as out of touch and irresponsible as always on national security, and they’re trying to take advantage of the strongest but most impressionable subset of their caucus. That’s why now more than ever, progressives have to offer strong, smart, rational approaches to U.S. national security, military, and foreign policy challenges.
Tags: Afghanistan, American declinism, American Enterprise Institute, Bill Clinton, Bill Kristol, Cold War, conservatives, crazed militarist, DC Republican establishment, Decision Points, defense budget, Don Rumsfeld, F-22, Foreign aid, foreign assistance, foreign policy issues, Fox News, global marketplace, Great Depression, great power, hegemonic imperialist, House Appropriations chairman, Iran, Iraq, Jim Talent, Joseph Stalin, national security, National Security Strategy, open international economic system, Paul Ryan, Pentagon, Rand Paul, START, Tea Partiers, Tea Party, The Lunatics, Tim Geithner, Tom Donnelly, U.S. foreign policy, Weekly Standard, Wild Bill
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Thursday, July 22nd, 2010
Jim Arkedis
Jim Arkedis is the director of PPI's National Security Project.
by Jim Arkedis
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised concern over human rights during her trip to Vietnam, a country she last visited in the waning days of her husband’s presidency. Per the NYT:
Noting Vietnam’s recent jailing of democracy activists, attacks on religious groups and curbing of Internet social-networking sites, Mrs. Clinton said she raised the status of human rights in a meeting with a deputy prime minister, Pham Gia Khiem. … She said the United States would press Vietnam to do more to protect individual freedom. …
Mrs. Clinton’s comments were notable, given that she has played down human rights concerns in visits to Vietnam’s neighbor, China. But her timing, at the outset of the visit, suggested that she wanted to make her point, and move on.
The last line is particularly intriguing, and offers potential fodder to critics from across the political spectrum: from conservatives wed to George Bush’s “Freedom Agenda” to liberal critics to issue-focused NGOs, like Human Rights Watch and Freedom House. Is the Secretary of State just making her point and moving on? Have human rights become simply a talking point, as Secretary Clinton unfortunately suggested before her first trip to China in early 2009?
Despite her regrettable gaffes about China, she’s said that her more nuanced approach is “designed to make a difference, not prove a point.” So what is Secretary Clinton’s approach, exactly?
In Russia, a country desperate for some international respect, a stern human rights stare-down could prove counter-productive. The balance between economics, bilateral security, multi-lateral security, climate change and personal freedoms demands measured engagement. Would, for example, Russia have cooperated on New START or Iran sanctions if the Obama administration issued one human rights tongue-lashing on top of another? Anything’s possible, but such agreements would have undoubtedly been more difficult to come by.
That’s why, in big countries as Will Marshall wrote on this site the other day, Secretary Clinton is focused on building civil societies:
In an important speech that got little attention back home, she unveiled what she called a 21st century approach to promoting democracy by defending civil society. Clinton described an independent civic sector as a nursery for democratic citizenship, no less critical to a free society than representative government and a market economy. And she warned of a spreading global backlash against civil society…. This marks a significant departure from the Bush administration’s approach to democracy, which centered on demands for elections and accountable political institutions. …
Clinton aimed more modestly, but shrewdly, at bolstering a particular aspect of liberty – freedom of association. In authoritarian countries, civil society or “third sector” organizations play an especially vital role in building the infrastructure of liberal democracy. … [Clinton's approach is] deeply subversive, in that it enables indigenous reformers to carve out space for civic action that is independent of state control. By defending the right of CSOs to organize and operate, and receive international support, the United States and other free countries can promote democracy from the ground up.
It’s in this vein that Secretary Clinton addressed an audience on cyber freedom at the Newseum earlier this year.
Some countries have erected electronic barriers that prevent their people from accessing portions of the world’s networks. … They’ve expunged words, names, and phrases from search engine results. They have violated the privacy of citizens who engage in non-violent political speech. These actions contravene the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.
Expect the direct challenging on human rights to continue behind closed doors, but expect the Obama administration to take a more indirect, but ultimately more effective path in public.
Photo credit: US Mission Canada’s Photostream
Tags: Barack Obama, China, Freedom Agenda, Freedom House, George Bush, Hillary Clinton, Human rights, Human Rights Watch, Iran, New York Times, Pham Gia Khiem, Russia, sanctions, START, Vietnam
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